NYC to phase out separate classes for 'gifted and talented' students

Good luck with that.. lol

A mistake. But usually parents of G and T kids do private lessons, after-school specials and summer programs.

Plus their good grades help them get scholarships etc.

America, hell-bent on promoting mediocrity.

Great. Now the babythugs can beat up on the poindexters in the classroom, not just outside.

Moronic.

We can't have anything nice.

G&T for friday happy hour!

It'll be like watching a trainwreck in slow motion. Another reason for an exodus to the burbs.

NY schools still had that?!

Howard Jarvis and Prop 13 managed to wipe that out in the 70s for Cali kids.

Just another nail in the coffin of America...why excel in anything?

all of you queens haven't as been as much near a child or a school in decades, shut the fuck up

[quote]why excel in anything?

Now you’re gettin’ it!

G&T steals resources away from the student body. I say good riddance.

What a disastrous decision. Really cruel for the kids.

Being intelligent is going to be RACIST! soon.

Actually R11, 25 years worth of experience working in education, from Middle School teacher to higher Ed administration and this will be a disaster. The gifted students will be left to flounder in a sea of mediocrity or their parents will pull them from the public schools and put them in private or flee to the burbs.

[quote]all of you queens haven't as been as much near a child

I suspect there are many DL queens who have been much, much too near a child r11.

I know nothing. It'll be obvious with my question. Are gifted students under Special Education rules in that they have an IEP and such? Like I say I know nothing.

it depends on the district

They throw the retards in there too.

[quote]...their parents will pull them from the public schools and put them in private or flee to the burbs.

As they must, if they are doing their jobs as parents. Their first responsibility is always to keep their child safe. In this instance, it means keep them safe from this insane decision.

Yes, they have IEPs along with nearly every other student. Differentiate for 120 kids a day.

Good times.

Mainstreaming is disastrous on both ends of the spectrum. I was certified to teach but immediately joined the corporate world after college due, in part, to my horror re what I observed with mainstreaming. Schools placed nonverbal children in regular classes. Even if the nonverbal child had an assigned aide, they consumed almost all of the teacher's attention and time. These children had no apparent capacity to learn. This was nothing more than state-sanctioned babysitting. It's almost as if the state is attempting to slowly erode public schools on purpose.

Next they’ll be closing the specialized schools. So long High School of Performing Arts. Coco, Leroy, Bruno, Doris, you’re no longer special.

I taught for 30 years and still work part/time as a consultant. There are always issues with G&T but ending it will NOT end the disparity in achievement between blacks/Hispanics and whites/Asians. They've been to trying to close it for decades with very little success. Remember Obama and Race to the Top? Basically, accomplished nothing in terms of racial outcomes.

They are basically saying they can't get blacks to care about education so the solution is to just get rid of it.

I thought they only had issues with academic ones, not performing arts ones with enough of the 'underrepresented minority'?

They did that on "Head of The Class" with Richard Pryor's daughter.

This is bullshit. The Gifted and Talented program at my school was a lifesaver.

I’m not a teacher so feel free to dismiss. But in my observation, kids who had stable homes with money and involved parents came out ahead pretty much regardless, unless they had mental health problems. G&T seemed composed of kids whose parents would have been and willing to find and pay for college tutors and the like anyways, that’s how they even ended up aiming toward G&T. The resources could be better spent on kids who don’t have any help from home.

The whole coastal obsession with school ranking and status seems insane to me as an adult. There are grown men I work with who still grow faint if they see a resume from Yale, even though they can see directly from working with our coworkers who went to mediocre schools that credentials like that don’t always dictate success.

Schools have been trying to narrow the gap in educational outcomes and nothing has worked. That's the truth. Nobody can talk about it honestly so society plays the blame game. Ten years ago it was blamed on bad teachers who didn't care. Now it's systemic racism that's caused all the problems.

I grew up poor, on welfare, in a trashy hillbilly family, many of whom are now dead from opioid overdoses, in jail, or in psychiatric hospitals. My school system's gifted program lifted me up and out into a much different life than I would have had otherwise. This is sad.

Same here, R33. The G&T program gave me the confidence to move up and move away from my "we don't need no book learnin'" environment. Is there any sanity left in this world?

G & T is white actin', know what I mean.

[quote]Schools placed nonverbal children in regular classes. Even if the nonverbal child had an assigned aide, they consumed almost all of the teacher's attention and time. These children had no apparent capacity to learn.

As someone who was in Gifted in the 80s and 90s and who taught both special needs and Gifted kids in the 90s and 2000s, I have to say that the problems you saw were specific to your district(s).

In all the districts I went to school in and taught in, the special needs kids integrated into the classrooms were only in with the regular classroom population if they were able to function on par with their peers. Anyone nonverbal who would be in a classroom would have a special reason for it and be on an aisle or at a separate table, with their para-educator. The kids never took the majority of the teachers' attention, but I had several teachers who would claim they did, out of spite mostly. They didn't want the "retards" in their room in the first place. For a whole semester I gave up my planning hour to sit with four high-functioning special needs kids in the computer classroom because the teacher had a fit that they had "only" one para-educator with them. Those students did really well, I was very proud of them, and then the teacher went to the principal, said she couldn't handle "all those retarded kids wasting my time," and they were kicked out for no reason.

You sound like her. Glad you didn't teach. It's a shame r20 might, though on DL these days, I assume they're just some random piece of shit spewing out crap, especially since they were posting during the school day.

But more to the point, Gifted students won't be causing the alleged problems you complained about with the profoundly disabled and nonverbal kids. The comparison you made is a poor one and sounds like some thin excuse to complain about retards.

Oh, it's real. How can they NOT take away from regular instruction?

This will lead to a society lime the one depicted in the movie Idiocracy. A society that eases out hardworking, intelligent and resourceful people in favor of dumb, lazy, and violent population. But I guess it’s what people in NYC and other big cities want or they won’t keep voting for the same shit.

I was gifted, I was put up for adoption.

I have three kids in the NYC public school system. Manhattan. I have LOTS of experience, and could tell endless stories about rich kids and poor kids, “elite” public schools and the ones where they stick the underperforming kids. I’ve had a nice sampling of all of them, over the last 20 years.

Removing the G&T won’t really hurt the top tier of kids as much as it will hurt the poorest and least advantaged. It’ll hurt everyone, really, but it’s not going to help the worst-off.

Universal pre-K was a major, wonderful, step in the right direction. Removing accelerated and selective high school standards is incredibly regressive.

Success and failure always begins with the PARENTS. And the culture they grow up in. Parents who are involved and invested will find ways to enrich and supplement — and it’s not about money. We were poor, growing up, and my mother took full advantage of every free/low-cost activity and scholarship out there. If you look, it’s there. This city is amazing at providing resources. And even at the worst school, there are teachers who encourage and push kids toward success, regardless of income. There are amazing people out there who will help; I could cry, thinking about the good ones who dedicate themselves to making kids successful.

I really feel that DeBlasio is being spiteful here.

It will result in worse schools. I lived in NYC in early 00s and my kid’s school looked like a prison. It had been built in early 20C to teach basic math & reading to factory worker children. In late 1990s women who were bankers & lawyers decided to stay in manhattan and set about turning all public schools on UES into versions of Little Red Schoolhouse (PS 6) if not in looks then on aptitude exams. Schoolwork became much harder. We moved a few years later & my son was learning in public school in 2nd grade same thing he’d learning in public school kindergarten in Manhattan. So good luck, kids.

They were already sending black kids to UES for integration & they were already doing poorly not just behind white kids, but also behind Asian kids from Chinatown who were bused in for integration. There were 4 groups of kids - blacks, Latin, Asian & white - and each group hung out with their own, because culture & language. Going to school with Sdian kids didn’t make my kid more like the Asian kids, and didn’t make the Asian kids more like the white or the black kids. The Asian kids left school in afternoon and went straight to their mandarin classes downtown

R36, this was Texas in the late 90's under W. where he used the state as a guinea pig for his ill-conceived No Child Left Behind program. Non-verbal children were mainstreamed (all day!) in classes often exceeding 40 students based on age, not cognitive ability. Non-verbal is not even the correct descriptor. These children would often squawk and flail about throughout the day. Even though many were restrained in their wheelchairs, some could inflict harm on others who came into their orbit. Their behavior caused disruption to the whole class to who's benefit? It didn't help their fellow students. It could not have been comfortable for these children either - imagine being strapped to a chair for hours on end with little comprehension of your surroundings nor being meaningfully engaged based on your personal abilities? The school was effectively serving as a babysitter for parents and a school district with no better options.

Rail against me all you want, but the issue is that this country has a woefully inadequate social safety net. Had we better resources, children would be placed in environments that best suit their needs. That includes gifted and talented students, particularly those with disinterested, neglectful parents. G&T programs are a lifeline for many students. Mainstreaming them means they just get lost in the shuffle.

How is this not dumbing down the schools so the less smart kids feel better about themselves?

How dare anyone be talented and gifted!

Chinese and South Asian (Indian, Pakistani) immigrants use this to get ahead. DeBlasio apparently hates them.

R3 is the mediocre one. I was in the gifted program as a kid and I didn't really get anything out of it. It's the struggling kids who need attention, gifted kids do fine on their own and don't need the help.

R44 is the real racist. Gifted kids don't need the extra help, they'll do fine on their own. LOL at racist Republicans pretending to care about minority kids.

R43, how is this dumbing anything down? Smart kids will be smart whether they have a "gifted" program or not. Racist Republicans are just looking to lash out at de Blasio. What would you stupid rednecks know about being gifted anyway?

"Struggling kids" do not have much hope if they lack parents interested in their development. Schools cannot wholely raise these children. More talented children should not have to endure material or instruction tailored to struggling children.

This is going to cause even more middle class flight from these schools and the city.

Allow me to explain why this is fucked up.

For years, NYC struggled to get white middle class parents to keep their kids in public school and not move to the burbs.

In the late 80s/early 90s, the city started all these special G&T programs in bad schools in gentrifying neighborhoods.

It was like South Africa--the promise was that the G&T programs operated almost like separate schools and the kids never interacted with the non-G&T kids.

This started in elementary school and then expanded out to middle school.

It was great for real estate interests too because white parents could spent $1MM on a brownstone knowing they would not have to pay $60K/kid on top of that for private school or move to Westchester when the oldest kid started kindergarten.

The G&T programs were done by district, so you could live in the just-starting-to-gentrify neighborhood and send your kid to the mostly white-and-Asian upper middle class G&T program in the already-gentrified neighborhood.

The downside is it created even worse segregation in the system, but the reality is that upper middle class parents want their kids to go to school with similar kids and will move or go private if they can't.

I wasn’t in a gifted program, because my school didn’t have one, but what it did have is a program for students who worked hard and did their homework and thus got good grades. That seemed for fair than a gifted program which I believe is based just ok intelligence. But to have neither is detrimental to hard working or talented students in under performing schools.

Hopefully Adams will overturn this. He will have to say something on the matter if he wants the Asian vote.

Not fair! I was the smartest kid in Brooklyn!

[quote] upper middle class parents want their kids to go to school with similar kids and will move or go private if they can't.

You’ve pretty much described the Philadelphia school system, which has long been a disaster. Parents move to PA suburbs or Jersey (which has very high taxes but good schools) or go private. Friends schools if you’re rich or catholic if you’re merely upper middle class.

[quote] G&T steals resources away from the student body

How does it do that? They still have to teach them. I would argue that students who are slower to learn or less cooperative or disruptive in any way in school expend even more resources and detract from the learning environment which takes its toll on other students.

[quote] The gifted students will be left to flounder in a sea of mediocrity or their parents will pull them from the public schools and put them in private or flee to the burbs.

This happened to me in elementary school. We actually moved to the county north of us, so I could go to a better school with a normal gifted program.

Smart kids need to be challenged.

This might come as a surprise to some of the commenters here.

The same way that it’s not fair to put students in a class that’s too difficult, it’s not fair to put students in a class that’s too easy. If teachers are teaching to the lowest level of proficiency, they’re not teaching to the rest of the class.

Mayor Bill deBlasio can't stand Asians always out performing browns and walk. So let's lower the standards. Glad we'll be rid of him soon. But wait, he wants to run for Governor. Ruining the City of New York wasn't enough for him.

Does NYC have any quantifiable evidence that mainstreaming G&T students improves overall student outcomes? There are proven methods for improving student outcomes: free or subsidized childcare for low-income parents from birth through school (before and after care), Early Head Start and Head Start, income assistance, housing assistance, food assistance, job assistance for parents, free or subsidized therapy, and free or subsidized educational support.

Does NYC still have chalkboards? We've had smartboards in public schools in London since 2008.

MOST have computers.

Thanks, Bill Gates.

I guess.

They certainly have smartphones.

Read a paper written on one. Nice.

The problem in NYC is that maybe 25% of those kids will be mainstreamed.

The rest will start the next school year in a private school or a suburban public school

This is great news for the Catholic schools which were closing due to falling attendance.

Sending children to public school has become a form of child abuse.

Another product of liberal "thinking."

Bill de Blasio has engaged in race baiting on a level if reversed would violate all sorts of federal laws.

Since he's married to an African-American, and parent of mulatto children he feels it is his duty to right so many perceived wrongs, totally not understanding issues at all.

Children do not end up in "gifted and talented" or whatever programs by chance, it is result largely of their home environment. Asian and white parents get this and have long focused on their children's education like a laser beam from pretty much time they are born.

Blacks and their supporters always say same things; "coloureds are "X" percentage of population so they must be represented by "Y" in any and everything from housing on down. This never mind if issue is they just don't meet standards.

White children make up a small percentage overall of NYC k-5 and 6-8 public school system, and even smaller at 9-12. Where you do see large numbers of white kids it either is because of where they live (such as District 2 in Manhattan, or parts of Staten Island, etc....), or simply because they tested well enough to get into selective middle and high schools.

Real beef coloureds and latinos/hispanics have are with Asians who dominate specialized high schools along with "G&T" programs.

Asians continue voting democrat even though it is clear Bill de Blasio and large part of NYC government in intent on taking them down a peg or two.

Eric Adams (who everyone is treating as next mayor of NYC even before elections next month) isn't wholly onboard with this plan. The man has been studying how the last black mayor of NYC failed, and is keen to avoid that fate and not be reelected. Thus despite what some may think about Adams being a "pro-black" mayor, it remains to be seen how far he is willing to push that envelope.

I’ll have another G&T!

And one for Mahler!

70% of school teachers are Marxists.

And 70% of school teachers are female.

They tried this in the UK in the late 70's/80's, all it achieved was that the kids who were formerly in an advanced education environment got bored in a mixed one and stopped attending school on a regular basis.

Is there, like, a minimum height requirement?

[quote] he's married to an [bold]African-American[/bold], and parent of [bold]mulatto[/bold] children

Ahhh Datalounge.

Where it will always be 1987

R72 the term 'mulatto' is more 1887 than 1987.

You can use 'half-caste' instead of 'mulatto'.

We say halfrican now.

Half-breed is acceptable.

"You look all mixed up."

R10 Don't kid yourself: this is happening all over Britain, too.

[quote] Don't kid yourself: this is happening all over Britain, too.

But we expect it there because Britain is already too far gone. Where else do they call a slum housing project an “estate”?

great move by NY this is the best preparation for work culture

De Blasio is a clown among clowns.

G&T at my public elementary school was a weekly after school nerd group play date with puzzles and games supervised by some lady who wasn’t a regular teacher but was on the staff.

That was my experience as well, r81. I was in GATE in the 70's and it was basically a bunch of us nerdy Star Wars fans getting together to talk about Star Wars and make a model of an xwing. It was run by Mrs. White who taught 6th grade. I remember not really wanting to stay after school for it and skipping it a few times....until Mrs. White stopped by my HOUSE (teachers don't do that anymore) and talking to my mom. Then my mom made me go.

It's funny because back then I knew so many of my teacher's home phone numbers. Kids today can't be trusted with that. I loved Stranger Things when they showed Dustin calling his science teacher at home because that was pretty much the norm back then. I used to call and hang out with my band teacher a lot in Junior High. And when the totally gay female PE teacher took a few of us chosen girls out to see Tootsie one night, I was SO excited. I was a baby dyke.

When Democrats say that immigrants are smarter and harder working than you, they will be right, thanks to shit like this.

There is very little value placed in education these days. Combine that with social media, and you'll have a generation of jaded, apathetic, and undereducated adults who will blame society for their own failings.

Duh Blasio's son graduated from Brooklyn Tech, one of the elite magnate high schools. Oh, the irony!

His son also attended Yale. Duh Blasio is in some hot water for using his security detail as a family car service and family moving service. Several times security drove Dante to Yale. Security also helped the daughter move from Brooklyn to Gracie Mansion.

DeBlasio’s wife is a confirmed lesbian. I wonder how they conceived their children.

The stupid kids always slow down the classroom for no reason. It's like in real life. Fuckin Trump. Ugh, disgusting

I think they are stopping the GT program and going with STEM. GT programs have a lot of field trips, they were geared to parents who volunteer at schools to make the field trips work. The entire school can be in the GT program, or parents from underserved schools could sign their kids up.

STEM is an updated version of this program. It is better than GT though.

Comments on Gothamist coverage of this scheme make those on DL seem rather tame in comparison.

Notice BdeB pulled this out of his ass with election day in less than four weeks, and he is out of office in two months. How much if any of this actually happens depends upon next mayor and whoever he puts in as head of DOE.

These programs are really not fair. For instance, if your parents are cunts, you are not going to be able to sign up. You could be a smart and kind child too, just born to a disturb family.

There are so many problems with these types of programs.

STEM is better.

Why is STEM better? How will it help in this circumstance? I’m being sincere...I want to understand.

Life is competitive....better to lean that now and be ready for adult life. School isn’t for everyone....what if they identify those who excel academically. THEN, address other kids and help them find their best qualities, talents..and place them on path. It wouldn’t be right to let kids be left behind others, it’s not do well in school and there’s no alternative. Lots of ways to succeed in life skills talents and stinks… A lot of kids don’t have guidance and these areas. Not that the school should be parents....But provide alternative directions perhaps?

Instincts for stinks....dictation sorry

Instincts for stinks, sorry

Fair point R73

I was being kind

Again this has nothing to do with what is best for children, just BdeB pandering to his base on way out the door.

One can't get away from these people nowadays, they see segregation everywhere, regardless of fact it doesn't exist, and are doing their level best to bring down everything to base levels.

I think everything about this can be summed up in what I'm linking below. Yes, I know I ended that sentence in a preposition. That might be part of the problem we are headed to. Why don't you all fuck right off?

Maybe it's time to realize that not everyone in the world is"cut out" to be part of the white collar, corporate culture that has been designed as some sort of perfect lifestyle. For all the talk of diversity, this is a huge blind-side that liberal/democratic/whatever want to talk about or address in any meaningful way. The only way we, as in, the world, are going to address this in a meaningful way, is to acknowledge that there are people who do not want to work in or simply cannot fit into corporate culture. There are wide swaths of people who absolutely cannot and/or do not want it.

That does not mean they do not want to work. It means there are a lot of people out there, in the world who want to work toward in environments that lead them towards something they feel a sense of pride. It's sickening what is going on right now. We have no option, but to buy slave made goods at this point. This shit has to change, and I hope it does. Manufacturing, etc, has to come back on a more level way. The world cannot depend on China in the way it has been. This isn't political. This is the way it has to go in order for the world to become more peaceful and prosperous.

I am in no way a socialist/communist. I want to see a world where people who can establish themselves in a way that makes them successful/content. It's ridiculous that is has come to this.

Oh, here what I was going to post above. See how many sentences I can end in prepositions.

I wasn't very bright and I knew it. I certainly didn't care if math geniuses or other advanced students had a different class. Kids could car less. This is all about the parents and their egos about having average children.

People can be bright in different ways. That was my point. I'm R97. It's that there seem to be a narrowing of opportunity was my point, but it's not simply narrowed by ability, it's being, and has been narrowed by interest. There really is a divergence being created between wealth, that I'm not sure is a great or beneficial thing. I really do think there is something else going on with all of this.

[quote] STEM is better.

What does that mean? STEM will hardly be useful if they stick the dumb kids in with the smart ones. That's the entire problem.

Those comments at Gothamist are vey interesting and are by parents of students and past attendees of NYC schools.

I can tell you exactly what’s going to happen. The smart kids will have to teach the dumb kids while the teacher supervises (or goes out for smoke breaks).

I'll say it again; this whole nonsense about "integrating" NYC public school system by removing G&T along with host of other things BdeB has tried or done over past eight years.

By DOE's own statistics NYC public school system is overwhelmingly minority (black, latino/hispanic, asian, etc...). Whites make up about 15% or less of entire system, and even then they are concentrated at k-5 where zoning largely dictates where kids go to school. No one is sending a kid from UES near P.S. 6 up to Harlem or whatever.

Thus all this blather about eliminating this or that program won't move needle much or at all k-5 or even middle school because kids will still largely attend locally zoned schools.

Bdeb and city council have tried other tricks like busting predominantly white/well off areas of city by forcing developers to include "affordable" or "low income" housing in new buildings that require zoning changes or something else from city to make happen. Working theory there is such actions will move poor or lower middle class minorities into buildings and or areas they never would have been previously. Since city oversees lottery process they've mandated a whole list of persons who must be accepted; homeless, criminals, illegal aliens, bad credit, no credit, previous housing court cases, etc...

This housing scheme won't do much because only so much rental housing is being built in high income areas of city like Manhattan that require developers to get into bed with city.

So the other trick is what we see in this latest salvo across bow by BdeB. He claims that by making NYC public school system more "open" and "equitable" it will entice parents (by this one assumes he means white/affluent), to send their children to city schools.

NPH and his husband aren't (or weren't) the only white well off parents living in Harlem. There are tons of them, but they largely all avoid locally zoned schools. Like NPH's kids they all are driven or otherwise taken to private schools below 96th street or at least 125th street.

I don’t think solving the problem of de facto segregation is something that law can do.

Wasn’t it Samuel Johnson who said, “How small of all that human hearts endure that part which laws or kings can cause or cure?”

All this will do is cause white (and Asian) flight.

Until blacks learn to perform better in schools and commit less crime, people are always going to self-segregate, no matter what law or regulation you try to implement,

Just pathetic. The younger generation is just going to get more and more stupid. They can’t even write in cursive or read a clock with hands because they’re too stupid and lazy to learn anything.

I had a kid, now in her 30s, who was reading at two. In the 6th grade, she took the SAT and scored in the 80th percentile of the SAT. Regular school didn't work for them, and a G&T program made a profound difference.

Raising a kid like that isn't easy when you have no money. Raising a kid with learning deficits is equally hard. I had to rely on the public schools system to help me educate one of each.

I learned that each of them required special ED, in different ways. G&T programs are special ED. Same as remedial programs for kids who academically struggle.

G&T kids lacking academic stimulation get into trouble. To a worse degree, because they are very clever about fucking things up.

Instead of knocking out G&T programs, why not take a run at troubled kids with these programs to see if the problem isn't failure to learn, but rather failure to engage bored kids? Do some one-on-one. Figure it out.

BTW both kids turned out great. Brilliant, accomplished public school kids--now adults. I was able to find programs on each end of the spectrum that suited each child's needs. I don't know if that would be available to me today.

Public school education has been exhaustively studied for 100+ years. DeBlasio is ignoring hard sought solutions. The G&T kids raise test scores across the board as they should. A Bell curve has levels down the line. Are we going to ignore that some kids will always do better than others because that is a hard reality? Real stupid.

This is a purely political move that does not serve any of the kids. Give DeBlasio the Dunce Cap.

R33: You sir, are a person I admire. Good for you, I wish you well.

r102 more likely the dumb kids will drag others into the mud with them

R104

George McGovern warned about legislating morality, but no one would hear it then, and democrats/liberals/progressives are now doubling down on previous efforts.

Above groups learned from their mistakes post civil rights act and laws, so now are taking a different tack.

Banning single family home construction, attacking zoning restrictions, forcing areas or developers to create "affordable" or "low income" housing, expansion of rent control laws, etc... All this and more are part of democrat/progressive efforts to do an end run around whites (or anyone else) from fleeing to perceived safety of suburbs or any other enclave that by thought or outright design keeps "others" out.

[quote] Until blacks learn to perform better in schools and commit less crime

Remember this one next time someone says there is no racism on DL

Same category of thinking that says "until gays learn to stop molesting young boys and converting them to homosexuality, they should not be allowed to become schoolteachers or parents"

One of the youths who will be deprived of the gifted and talented program

r23 is correct. Kids like the ones he described really don't belong in school but in a group home-type situation. There are unteachable.

RE: "Mulatto." This word is frequently used by black and biracial people in casual conversation. It's not taboo when they use it.

[quote]Maybe it's time to realize that not everyone in the world is"cut out" to be part of the white collar, corporate culture that has been designed as some sort of perfect lifestyle. For all the talk of diversity, this is a huge blind-side that liberal/democratic/whatever want to talk about or address in any meaningful way.

THIS x 100! A white collar career is not the end-all/be-all of success, as has been shoved down everybody's throat in the US for a long time now. The trades are not given the respect they should be given.

STEM is the program with funding. They are just ending GT. This is fine.